Red and Blue

The overly simplistic analysis of the elections from 2000-2004 has been the infamous "Red State, Blue State" fallacy. This theory stems largely from the Electoral College maps that TV election night coverage loves to display. In a way it is a fun and simplistic way to understand the breakdown in American.

Take a look at the 2004 election by county. At first glance, the nation is a sea of red with pockets of blue. Even Kerry states like California and Pennsylvania look more red than blue. When you look at the blue, you can pick out the major urban centers in the US. The predominance of red counties reflects the large amounts of sparsely populated land in the US. The Republicans dominate the country geographically, but the Democratic areas contain much higher population densities.

The real divide in this country is the urban rural split. The Democrats dominate in big cities; Republicans are most powerful in rural areas. The reason that Republicans do well in the farmbelt and the Sunbelt is because of larger rural populations. The coasts contain most of the biggest cities, so the Democrats dominate the Pacific Coast and the Northeast. Midwest states like Ohio and Minnesota are evenly divided, and so they are the "battleground states".

The real battleground is the suburbs. Suburbanites are evenly split and more likely to be independents. Inner suburbs are more urban-like and therefore more Democratic. Outer suburbs are more rural and thus more Republican. Whoever can swing the suburbs can win statewide elections much easier. Most of the precious few competitive House seats lie in suburban areas.

Look at last night's election results. True, Michael Bloomberg won a fourth consequent term for a Republican mayor in NYC, but NYC Republicans are a lot different from the Bill Frists and Tom DeLays who dominate the GOP today. Bloomberg himself was a Democrat until fairly recently, and both he and Giuliani embrace multiculturalism, gay equality, abortion rights and other issues that drive Tom Coburn mad.

In Virginia, Tim Kaine easily won in a state that is part of the GOP solid South. He won largely because of dominating the vote in the DC suburbs of Northern Virginia. Even though he is from Richmond, he even won the more conservative suburbs like in Loudon County and Prince William County. This is largely because of voter anger over Bush.

The middle class in America, who largely dwell in suburbia, are not happy with Bush and are taking it out on the GOP. They are not getting the tax breaks he is doling out, and they are getting a much smaller share of the GDP growth than the upper class is. The Republicans don't even pretend to care about the poor, and prove it by cutting more and more support from the budget while doling out massive corporate welfare. However, they have to at least fool the middle class to think that they represent them.

If the GOP does as poorly next year in the suburban districts as they did in Virginia and New Jersey last night, the Democrats will make serious in roads into the GOP majorities in Congress and win key races on the state level. Bush can afford to be cavalier towards the poor, but an angry middle class will turn those swing suburban counties a deeper shade of blue.


Democrats dominate Virginia's DC Suburbs